Nobel Prizes
Couple things in my news feed this morning that really woke me up — one a startling statistic and the other a reminder of what statistics miss. The first from Nature, 'How to win a Nobel prize: what kind of scientist scoops medals?': John W. Strutt, who won a
Bharatiya Janata Party
From my article in The Hindu today, New science awards, old political project: The government has been trying repeatedly to shut … the opposition to its policies and world view emanating from academia, a space the Hindutva programme has thus far failed to breach by choking funding and revenue through the
sexual violence
Spoilers abound; trigger warning: sexual violence In case you haven't watched the film and don't plan to, you can check out the plot description on Wikipedia. Maharaja was bad for two reasons. First, good films don’t lie to their viewers. Maharaja did in two instances.
noise pollution
Deepavali is less than a month away — then again it will only be a storm amid a steady drizzle of noises
Paris Marx
As illustrated by the Marx-Ling-Brown dispute over that Canadaland podcast and Israel's violence in West Asia
Automattic
Update, September 26, 2024: WordPress.org has banned websites hosted on WP Engine from accessing its resources. As someone put it on X, this is Matt Mullenweg dropping a giant turd into the laps of millions of WordPress users. I can't recommend this software any more in good
WordPress.com
Automattic CEO and WordPress co-developer Matt Mullenweg published a post on September 21 calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress”. For the uninitiated: WP Engine is an independent company that provides managed hosting for WordPress sites; WordPress.com is owned by Automattic and it leads the development of WordPress.org.
Analysis
On September 29, 2021, The Third Eye published an interview with Milind Sohoni, a teacher at the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas and at IIT Bombay. (Thanks to @labhopping for bringing it into my feed.) I found it very thought-provoking. I’m pasting below some excerpts from the
Analysis
If you get your space news from the website businesstoday.in, this post is for you. Business Today has published several articles over the last few weeks about the Starliner saga with misleading headlines and claims blown far out of proportion. I’d been putting off writing about them but
Analysis
“First, a clarification: Unlike in Gravity, the 2013 film about two astronauts left adrift after space debris damages their shuttle, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are not stuck in space.” This is the first line of an Indian Express editorial today, and frankly, it’s enough said. The idea that
Analysis
This tweet is spot-on… Maybe wring time to say this: India does not celebrate sports and sportspersons, it celebrates only winners — Pradeep Magazine (@pradeepmagazine) August 5, 2024 … and we’re seeing it play out somewhat in the aftermath of Vinesh Phogat being disqualified from the Paris Olympics for not staying
climate change
Tweets like this seem on point… pic.twitter.com/rLcTFtSvCU — Alex Hale 🌒 (@NBPTROCKS) July 30, 2024 … but I’ve started to wonder if we’re missing something in the course of expressing opinions about what we thought climate deniers would say and what they’re actually saying. That is, we
